My how easy it is to forget how great museums are ...

I've been spending a lot time at the Centre Pompidou. I keep trying to "finish" the permanent collection, but have yet to do so. I think I have spent a total of 10 hours there, which is epic for me (my attention span at museums is getting better). So, all those art history lectures start swirling around in my brain again. Without being burdened by essays, or god forbid a quiz, I can concentrate on the work and reflect on its influence in my work - funny how that is;).

Pierre Restany. That's it, that's all I can to say. But I do want to post an article that was printed in Artforum International Magazine in 2003 upon his death. This is a reminder to me, and also I will be able to call upon this article when I please.

Object lessons: Nicolas Bourriaud on Pierre Restany - Passages - Critical Essay

"PIERRE RESTANY? A MYTH." That was Andy Warhol's laudatory reply when asked his opinion of the inventor of Nouveau Realisme, who died in Paris in May. Restany was much more than a curator or a critic as we understand the terms today: He was at once a champion of artists and an entrepreneur of concepts, which he defended with all the power of his conviction. He is mostly remembered for founding the movement, with Yves Klein, Christo, and Jean Tinguely, in the late '50s. Less known is his more recent and discreet engagement with a new generation of largely European artists--from Pierre Huyghe to Rirkrit Tiravanija, Philippe Parreno to Olafur Eliasson--in whom he recognized the legacy of his theories on "technological humanism," ecology, and the appropriation of the sociological real. At the end of his life, Restany surprised young, informed curators and critics with his geo-strategic analyses of art, particularly its globalization, a theme he had mastered through his incessant travels to the four corners of the earth.

His legacy? The conceptual tools Restany forged in the late '50s are still effective today in approaching the art of our time. In his 1960 essay "Le Nouveau realisme," he wrote: "The allure of an object, of the household rubbish or the scraps of the dining-room, of the unleashing of mechanical susceptibility, of the diffusion of the sensibility beyond the limits of its perception [represents] the common good of all human activity." Farther down, he defines these practices: Ours, he writes, is "the great republic of our social exchanges, of our commerce in society." Thus my interest in Restany, and his interest in me, when I began to think about relational aesthetics almost a decade ago: In my theories, he saw above all and not incorrectly--extensions of his own reflections on art and communication. The concept of relations allowed him to bring his globalizing and planetary vision of art, expressed more in lectures and roundtable discussions than in print, back into the public eye.

But the name Pierre Restany will remain linked to a now commonplace idea that was so explosive in the late '50s: "the expressive autonomy of the real." It was a coup de force: to start from the readymade in order to establish a vocabulary, to think of the history of art in terms of use. Nouveau Realisme was Dadaism considered as a tool. At a time when one spoke of "neo Dada" in reference to Johns, Rauschenberg, and John Chamberlain, Restany asserted that the new art would be situated "forty degrees above the Dada zero." In other words, Dada could now serve as a basis for a new vocabulary, well beyond any sort of revival. To Restany, art represented a "cleansing of vision"--that is, not a set of more or less well-made objects but an optical device that allowed us to look at the new world surrounding us, whether that meant supermarkets or streets. The European artists then associated with Nouveau Realisme went a bit further than their more aestheticizing American counterparts. Cesar, who left the composition of his works to a machine, was more radical than Chamberlain, who "arranged" forms. That is what the "New Realists" exhibition in 1962 at Sidney Janis Gallery was intended to prove, by comparing the European and American new waves; but the show was a misfire. (Restany would later say that his vision had been watered down by the dealer.) All-powerful in European critical circles but unable to forge good alliances in America, Restany lost his war against New York.

Throughout his life, Restany developed an ethical project summed up rather well by the term "technological humanism." He contributed to the Prague Spring by ensuring the flow of French correspondence to Czech art magazines, protested the Brazilian military by resigning from his post as a curator of the Bienal de Sao Paulo in 1967, and published Le Petit Livre rouge de la revolution picturale (The Little Red Book of Pictorial Revolution) in 1968. Above all, he was the author in 1978 of the "Manifeste du Rio Negro" (Rio Negro Manifesto), which inaugurated the artistic debate on marginal cultures and on ecology in art. From then on, Restany's career was marked by his shift to the so-called periphery. He spent more time in countries like Argentina and South Korea (where he organized a large contemporary art exhibition in 1988) more frequently than the United States, Germany, or even France, where he only recently received institutional recognition. But if that recognition was slow in coming, the future should be one in which Restany's legacy is shown to be much richer than we believed. Let's bring his books back into print and make a date for later this century--a century sure to be more Restanian than the one before.

Nicolas Bourriaud is codirector of Palais de Tokyo, Paris. Translated from French by Jeanine Herman.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Artforum International Magazine, Inc. COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group

Chile reconfiguration

Whoever said that you can't re-edit old work? Ok, no one, but anyhow. Have a - still yet to be officially officially confirmed - show at La Maison du Chili in Paris for July. I will be showing videos from You are a Perpetual Tourist (also known as An Infinite Ordered Set of Events, gosh that's confusing), but only ones that I shot in Chile.



While initially making this work, there was a round where I played with meshing the videos together. In the end, it never panned out, but I am definitely sure that for these particular ones, this is where the installation needs to be. Here is a simple sample, I have more intricate combinations I am working with. I will post another sneak peek one, the sequences are more firmed up - oh and one the show is more firmed up.

P.S. don't mind the pixelation.

Photo Thoughts: France: round "un"

I have no idea what title to give this post.

So here I am, 2am and with insomnia - ok, not real insomnia, more like anxious thinking keeping me awake, but you know me: I like to self-diagnose. Lots of news and work to share - don't know where to begin.

The residency is going well. The project itself has had a lot of false starts (due, unfortunately to participants backing out or just simply not returning calls and/or answering emails - thank you to those of you who have), but I think we are finally getting going. Despite the material specifically for the project we have been researching in and around the city and we have each started our own projects. Matías has started these photo-portrait-collages. Not sure how to describe them, but once his website gets finished - they'll be up there and you can check them out. I have been doing some drawings, writings, and video-ing. Oh and I have been taking pictures. Ya know, taking in all that there is to offer here. And yet another "unfortunately" there is nothing sufficient enough to post, YET!

The drawings are based on gestures of couples: couples that I have seen interacting on the streets (then drawn by memory), or from images that I have taken. Some aren't even real couples, they are just a "couple o' people". The drawings are, of course, abstract - really, what would you expect?? I'll have to take pictures of a few and post them. [Yet, another thing on my list of things to do tomorrow - always tomorrow, but tomorrow really does get here quick!]

The photos are the same things you have always seen from me: funny juxtapositions, people on the street, pretty buildings ... I have been looking at them trying to find a camino, but one hasn't revealed itself yet.

The writings started as things on the computer, then mutated to actual physical writing in my sketch book (really, should I still call it that?? "sketch" when have you know me to sketch?), and then they became transcriptions from pretending that I am talking to an old friend (not anyone in particular, maybe I should choose someone).

Do you feel like this post is as anti-climatic as I feel it is? Oh well. I am in the smack-dab middle of the damn residency - what can one expect, really?

Oh the videos. These I am excited about. Not that I am not excited about the other things, but I feel like these have started to take a bit more form, even though I haven't actually touched any of the footage yet. Or maybe it is just because I think with these I am straying a bit from the gestures, or rather looking at them in a different way - AND starting to work with narrative again (that's how those texts started). In intimate situations (someone's home) I have been taking a lot of mise-en-scène (like how I am working on my French?) shots, which is something out of the norm for me. I have also been clandestinely recording these people's conversations. I don't know how this will all come together, but I like breaking out of my current usual. Who knows, maybe it won't turn into anything.

Alva Noë, again.

As I am updating some things on my website, without my original files, I have to find my references again on the internet. And so I am reminded of Alva Noë. His work/lectures are a great influence in my work.

I've embedded this from blip.tv.

Embodied Techne Series
02
Marlon Barrios Solano interviewed the philosopher of Alva Noë in his brief visit to NYC. He explains his line of inquiry on perception and action and why dance (and human movement) is relevant for the understanding of cognition. He also talks about his experience with the Lisa Nelson's "Tunning Scores" joint workshop and how certain approaches to dance training and composition can collaborate with science and philosophy in generating knowledge from an embodied perspective.

Enjoy.

To Wait

I started a new video about a week ago. It is moving slowly. In part this is due to the fact that I am slowing down part of the video A LOT and then exporting that and slowing it down again, blah blah halb. And the other reason I attribute it to (besides having a million and one things going on right now, this video and Paris are only two of the many) is building a relationship with the video. It is about - get ready, this is new - perception. There is this waiting, this expectation, this subdued, controlled frenzy of anticipation. Then after the event the people scatter; there is a chaotic exodus. Basically I have been playing with cutting between the two, using two channels, changing speeds to introduce certain characters ... I think all three of them will come into play.



When I started this video, I wanted it to be a "quick-video" - you know, one of those that I make to make things happen, one of those that I haven't been able to make in over a year. Well, obviously this isn't going to be one of those.
I find something magical in this waiting that we are all so familiar with. The wait that leads to the let down, to the anticlimax. Children are notorious for embracing that wait. They don't even seem to notice it. The new toy, the new movie, the new episode, the new whatever. It happens, you see it, you buy it. And then, it is just over. The amazing part is that it doesn't bother them; thankfully, they still have yet to understand this particular type of loss.

Many of the adult situations of waiting are different (yet, I find similarities in weddings, graduations, and the like, but we will save that discussion for when I get my PhD in cultural practices and performance ... ha ha ha.). Perhaps with the anticipated flight (you know, the one to Paris) I am thinking more and more about my travel experiences: waiting just to wait some more. You wait to check-in, to wait to go through security, to wait to sit at the gate, to wait to board, to wait to sit on the plane, to wait for a drink or snack or movie or to use your approved electronic device, to wait to land, to wait to de-board, to wait to get your luggage, to wait to ...

Now that I think about it, I guess it is really the same as all the others, but there isn't a "celebrated" event around any of that waiting. Your anticipation is all about the arrival, and on the way to the arrival you have different stages of waiting. But it is that arrival that is key - because that is when everything changes.

Back to the topic at hand. Slow video.

It's over.

Well, it is finally finished (Zapatos, that is). OMFs have been exported. Why OMFs? Well, your friend Nicole is a little green with the official protocols of movie making - oh, I remember a time when I thought I was gonna "snap" get a job at a production studio, sigh. The story is, that as hard as I tried to make it easier for the sound engineer, I should have just asked him - exactly what format do you want everything in? But I didn't. This of course caused me to have to go to the studio, hang out, chit-chat, and just create general camaraderie with the techs. In the end I figure it was better.

And now I have no excuses to get on the ball with my own work.

Mati is the executive producer for this documentary, that is still looking for funding. I came in at the end of his meeting with the director on Monday. It got me thinking about "Chapter One" or "Prologue" or whatever the hell it was that I was going to call the piece about finding my birth family and the hullabaloo (after using that word for the subtitles of Zapatos, I have decided that it really needs to become a part of our vocabulary again) around it - and of course still swirling around the event.

So, there is this genre of autobiographical documentaries, but the key is that even though these projects are COMPLETELY therapeutic for the director - how to make the piece without it only being therapy. I have written about it before - in sketchbooks and a few here on the blog. I am desperately looking for the "clave". But it isn't about looking, is it? I know that. I have always known that, but for some reason it is easier to keep looking - it's that procrastination trap that we all fall into.

Why am I into this "final thought" business???? The final thought for the post - GET TO IT!